Joetsu Festival

A summer festival held in Joetsu City, Niigata Prefecture in late July every year. The festival started as a Gion Festival in the castle town neighborhood of Takada. Numerous events are held over the seven days of the festival, and the entire city gets wrapped up in the excitement. Events include the Kawa-gion, in which portable shrines are carried down along the Sekikawa River from Takada to Naoetsu; a grand fireworks display held to welcome the portable shrines in the Kawa-gion; a huge folk dance parade in which 2,000 local residents dance to traditional songs in Naoetsu; and a traditional Shinto ceremony in which young men carry ceremonial rice piled high on a cart and run down the approach to Yasaka-jinja Shrine to offer it to the gods.